Tanker Fire On L.I. Linked To Old Defect

By RANDY KENNEDY

Published: October 14, 2000

Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board say that a fiery gasoline tanker accident that killed a Suffolk County woman last month may have been caused by a common safety problem with tankers that was pinpointed more than a decade ago but has not been corrected.

The accident, which was much like one in 1997 that killed a doctor and closed part of the New York State Thruway for six months, happened on Sept. 25 when a woman in a 1993 Chevrolet Suburban sport utility vehicle collided with the side of a tanker that had just delivered gas to a service station in East Islip, N.Y. The resulting explosion forced the evacuation of 100 people from their homes and also burned down power lines nearby.

Federal investigators stressed that their findings were preliminary, but said they had determined that the crash ruptured a set of unprotected pipes nestled beneath the truck that are used to fill and empty the tank. After pumping, these pipes can still contain as much as 50 gallons of gasoline, and in several similar collisions around the country the pipes have ruptured, spilling their contents and causing an explosion that would not have otherwise occurred.

In the East Islip accident, investigators found that the crash also caused a small rupture to the gasoline tank itself, but the charred evidence from the truck and the sport utility vehicle suggests that the gasoline that spilled from the unprotected pipes -- known as wet lines -- may have caused the explosion. ''The wet lines were breached and could have been the source of the fire,'' said Ted Lopatkiewicz, a spokesman for the safety board.

Federal transportation officials have been aware that the pipes were potentially dangerous since at least 1988. The Department of Transportation issued a regulation in 1989 to try to eliminate the problem in tankers hauling very hazardous liquids other than gasoline, by requiring better shielding of the pipes.

But the petroleum industry argued that the risk was too small to justify the cost of such measures for gasoline. And the government granted an exemption, while strongly encouraging the industry to make changes itself to eliminate the danger by installing better protection or a device to pump excess gas out of the pipes and back into the heavily protected tank compartments.

After the 1997 accident, near Yonkers, the safety board determined that if the pipes beneath that truck had not had dozens of gallons of gasoline in them, ''the fire would likely not have occurred.'' And so the board recommended to the secretary of transportation that the department prohibit the carrying of any hazardous materials, including gasoline, in external piping on cargo trucks, an estimated 60,000 of which deliver gas to about 175,000 service stations around the country.

But federal transportation officials resisted compelling the petroleum industry to make the change, saying that they were not convinced that it was merited by the number of incidents caused by wet lines.

Precise figures are not available about how many fatalities can be directly attributed to ruptured tanker pipes. The Transportation Department has found that 47 tanker truck accidents between 1990 and 1997 resulted in ruptured pipes but also says that some accidents like this may be going unreported. The American Petroleum Institute, which represents 500 petroleum companies, said research done on behalf of the institute in 1994 estimated that ruptured loading pipes had caused, on average, one death every 11 years.

In a letter to the safety board in May 1999, Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater wrote that it still appeared to the department that ''a total prohibition of wet lines may not be cost-effective.'' But yesterday, a spokeswoman for the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety within the department said that the office expected to begin looking at the issue again early next year, seeking comments from experts and considering changing the rules.

In the last several years, a handful of small trucking companies, mostly in the Northeast, have begun to make safety improvements themselves, installing a patented device made by a Brooklyn company, Cargo Tank Concepts, that pumps excess gasoline out of the loading pipes.

Ron Andenmatten, the president of the company, said yesterday that Sunoco Inc., based in Philadelphia, was the only major petroleum company that appeared so far to be planning to make the change voluntarily. The company has bought the devices for 65 of its trucks.

BP Amoco P.L.C., one of the world's largest oil companies, has also been testing the device on one of its trucks based in California, but the company reported in a recent newsletter that it had decided not to install the devices on all its trucks ''until legislation comes out mandating that the system be installed.''

Mr. Lopatkiewicz, the spokesman for the safety board, said it was not known when investigators, who are working alongside the Suffolk County Police Department, would make a final determination of what caused the East Islip accident. The central question they will be trying to answer, he said, is, ''If the wet lines did not have the gasoline in them, would this accident have had the severity that it did?''

Chart: ''A CLOSER LOOKTankers: A Hidden Weakness'' The National Transportation Safety Board says that fuel left in loading pipes may have ignited in a fatal accident last month on Long Island. The design weakness has led to similar incidents recently in the region. Even when a tanker has unloaded its cargo, up to 50 gallons of fuel can be trapped in the pipes connecting the tank to the fuel hoses. In an accident, the pipes break off from the tank valve to prevent the fuel tank from rupturing and exploding. But this can allow trapped fuel inside the pipes to spill and ignite. (Sources: National Tank Truck Carriers Association; Cargo Tank Concepts Ltd.)(pg. B6)